Best "Falling Gems" music game for the PC.
The Concept: It seems surprising that no-one has tried to emulate Guitar Hero with the prior games in this genre. Well, someone has finally done that with Rhythm Zone, a game which where you have to hit falling gems in rhythm to your music. The game also features downloadable music tracks for free.
The Good: The backgrounds are much more dynamic than the backgrounds in Audiosurf, while still maintaining some abstract sense to them. The game also works with all of the digital audio file formats I've tried with it (though I haven't tried .ogg and .flac). The difficulty levels also scale really well.
The Bad: While the game supports USB controllers, it doesn't work very well with USB controllers. In particular, while the game works with the Rock Band guitar, because it works with button presses alone without hitting the strum bar, I found a certain disconnect with playing in this fashion – I would pre-press the notes, as I would in Rock Band, which would also register as a “strum”, and would be considered a missed note by the game. Now, this is mostly a psychological thing for me, but it does bear mentioning.
Also, the DLC for additional songs has been limited, which is unfortunate, in part because Audiosurf has additional songs every week, but also because there are several achievements related to the DLC songs, and beating certain numbers of featured songs, which are unavailable until we get enough songs to meet the needs of those achievements.
Verdict: I do really like this game, in spite of some notable flaws, and will recommend picking it up.
Recommended Song: “Eminence Front” by The Who works really well for this game, as well as most Pink Floyd material.
